Antoine And Ellie

© 2013 David Jasmin-Green

A short, powerful looking white man in his late twenties sat on the park bench uncomfortably closely to Ellie. He had with him what she took to be a mongrel Staffordshire bull terrier of the type that the local hoodlums paraded around town, a huge, mostly white beast with a comical looking black eye patch, which is why that colouration is known amongst bull terrier enthusiasts as 'clown faced pied'. Ellie didn't know that, in fact she wasn't much of a dog person and she didn't know much about dogs at all.

(Go away. Go on, scoot, piss off! Of all the bars in all the towns, why did you have to walk into mine? There are benches every fifty yards or so in this park, so why pick this one? And why sit so bloody close? Downright rudeness, that's what it is. I just wanted to spend an hour or two in the invigorating spring sunshine reading my book. It's been a long, cold, lonely winter with nobody to keep me warm, but now the sun's decided to come out I should be able to enjoy it in peace. I don't want to talk, matey, if talk is what you're after – I don't want to talk to any man, OK? I guess you fancy a bit of black, no strings attached, you bastard. And I suspect that like most men idle chatter is the foundation stone on which you plan to build a mighty empire and make me your queen for a little while, I guess it's the first of many things on your extensive, doubtlessly rather complex wish list).

“Lovely day,” the man said.

“Hmmm,” Ellie grunted (Silly moo, you should have kept your big gob shut. A simple 'Hmmm' might sound stand-offish to you, it might sound like you're thinking 'Bugger off, you twat, leave me alone,' but a nutter might interpret it differently. He might interpret it as a come-on, and you have no idea whether or not this bloke's a nutter. And stop looking at him like that, you daft cow, black and white don't mix, you've proved that enough times. Look, he's not very pretty, but he's appealing in other, more guttural ways, I admit that, but he's not for you - but you'll never bloody learn, will you?)

“It's been a long, cold, lonely winter,” the stranger said, “but the sun has decided to shine at last. We have to make the most of it, I guess, because last year started off just like this, we had a couple of weeks of half-decent weather and then it pissed it down for the rest of the Summer.”

(He's reading your mind, the fucker's reading your mind. Quick, blurt out some lame, half-arsed excuse and scarper, run for the sodding hills, you daft bitch). “Yes, it's been a dreadful winter,” Ellie found herself replying. “Too much snow, and it was on the ground for weeks on end. I hate bloody snow. And we do have to make the most of pleasant spells like this, because you never know what's around the corner. A barbecue summer, the idiots at the Met Office promised us last year, and look what we got. So much for global warming.....”

“Now they're trying to tell us that the gulf stream is moving and so are the winter air currents, which explains why we're having nasty winters,” the man said, scratching his dog behind the ears. “I think they make it up as they go along. I don't have much trust in the notion of global warming, anyhow. Look at all the shit that volcanoes have pumped into the atmosphere over the years, and the meteorologists expect us to believe that the paltry emissions of world industry are going to turn the planet into a gigantic, cloying greenhouse in the very near future. If you look at the historical records you'll realise that climate varies enormously. In the thirteenth century, I think it was, they were planting vineyards in Scotland because Britain was experiencing an exceptionally warm period with mild winters, and a few hundred years later the Thames was freezing so hard in the Winter that you could skate on it and folk even built huge bonfires.”

“A few years back David Bellamy was publicly speaking out against the theory of global warming,” Ellie said. “Apparently he's since retracted his beliefs, but if you ask me the government have forced him to do so just like they silenced that doctor that spoke out against the MMR inoculations despite a mountain of damning evidence to back him up. Bellamy produced a bomb-load of data about the Arctic, he said that though glaciers were melting on the southernmost edges the actual bulk of ice is increasing at a record rate.”

“Yeah, I followed David Bellamy's views very closely, and I reckon he was talking a lot of sense, but like you say, all of a sudden he changed his mind, which was a trifle suspicious to say the least.”

“What's your dog's name?” Ellie said, holding out her hand, which the dog licked affectionately.

“Monkey,” the man replied. “Because he is one, before you ask.”

“He's a cross Staffie, isn't he?”

“No, he's a quarter Dogue de Bordeaux and three quarters Pit-bull, and I know that for a fact because I bred him myself.”

“Oh, shit,” she said, retracting her hand as quick as lightning. “Aren't Pit-bulls and Pit-bull crosses illegal?”

“Of course they're illegal, but so is cannabis, and folk still waste their lives doping their fool heads up with it.”

“But that's irresponsible, bringing a psychotic fighting machine into a public park.”

“You don't know much about dogs, do you?”

“Not really, no.”

“A female politician, I don't recall her name, made a stunningly sensible comment after the introduction of the Dangerous Dogs Act - she said that it's a people problem, not a dog problem, and no truer words have ever been spoken. A Staffs bull is a brutal fighting machine in the right hands, and even Labradors will fight if they're trained to do so. This dog has been brought up and socialised properly, and he's no more dangerous that a Chihuahua.”

“I'll believe that when I see it,” Ellie said (Nutter, nutter – run like fuck! This bloke's a bloody nutter). “Who do you think you are, Caesar Milan?”

“Right, I'll prove it to you,” the man said, unhooking Monkey's lead as an elderly woman approached with a delicate looking Cavalier King Charles spaniel and a small boy in tow. “It's all right, madam, the dog is very well behaved and he just wants to say hello. Go and greet them, Monkey.”

Monkey loped over to the trio wagging his tail. The boy held out his arms gleefully, but the spaniel looked like it was about to shit itself and the old woman stopped in her tracks, pulling the child to her side and wrapping her arms around him protectively, a look of mortal dread spreading across her face. “I'm not sure about this, mister,” she said. “I'm not too fond of them devil dogs, I don't trust 'em as far as I could throw 'em, which in this beast's case wouldn't be very far.”

“Sit down, Monkey,” the man said. “Prove what a nice by you are by waiting for your new friends to come to you.” Monkey sat down immediately, his tail beating the cracked tarmac like a metronome, and grudgingly the old lady approached, allowing her little dog to nervously sniff the huge animal and be sniffed back. “Let the boy stroke him, I promise it'll be OK.”

“Go on, Alex, you can give the doggy a bit of love, the man said 'e's friendly.” The boy rushed forward with the enthusiasm reserved for the very young, throwing his arms around Monkey and showering his powerful skull with kisses, and the dog wagged his tail even harder, though he made no attempt to move.

“Roll over, boy,” the man said, and Monkey obeyed. The old woman and the boy crouched down and scratched his tummy. “Smile at the nice people, Monkey.” The dog showed his huge teeth, grinning like a loon.

“Well I never!” the woman said. “'E's lovely. 'Ow on earth did you train 'im to be so obedient?”

“Time and patience and oodles of love, madam, that's all it takes. Bull terrier owners aren't all idiots, you know.”

“That was truly amazing,” Ellie said as the man called his dog back. “You've proved your point, big-head, you're a genius with dogs, and you appear to be a very nice guy into the bargain. What's your name?”

“Antoine, Antoine Gable. How about yours?”

“I'm Ellie, Ellie Buchanan. Are you, erm, married?”

“No no, I came out of a long term relationship a few months back, it had been going downhill for a while, and I guess I'm still licking my wounds. Ellie is a lovely name for a lovely girl.”

“Thanks. Ditto. I mean I came out of a relationship a while back too, nearly a year back, actually. It was a mess, the whole thing, it was hopeless really. Foolishly I clung onto the possibility that it might change given a bit of work, but he - Mike - wasn't interested. The split was still painful, though, and I don't want to make the same stupid mistake all over again.”

“Me neither. You want to come out for a drink some time, Ellie, see if we can get to know each other a bit better? No pressure, if you don't want to just tell me to bugger off.”

“Yes, Antoine, I'd like that,” Ellie said. “To come for a drink, not to tell you to bugger off.”